After Mocking Trump For Suggesting Hydroxychloroquine Might Be Effective Against Coronavirus, Media Starts To Admit That Maybe It Is

But they're not crediting Trump, and they're not admitting their own stupidity and lies, and the social media monopolies will not be banning their accounts for having promoted dangerous Fake News.

After repeatedly mocking President Trump for suggesting on March 19 that hydroxychloroquine could be an effective treatment for coronavirus, media organizations have begun acknowledging that the drug -- now approved for emergency use to treat coronavirus by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) -- may be useful after all.

Journalists and top Democrats have beaten a similarly hasty retreat from their previous claims that Trump's ban on travel from China was both xenophobic and ineffective. But media outlets' misinformation on hydroxychloroquine was unique because it involved not simply policy disagreements but also suggestive medical advice and directives that could have dissuaded some from seeking certain treatments.

"Malaria Drug Helps Virus Patients Improve, in Small Study," The New York Times reported this week, adding: "A group of moderately ill people were given hydroxychloroquine, which appeared to ease their symptoms quickly, but more research is needed."

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, went from threatening doctors who prescribed the drug with "administrative action" to requesting that the federal government ship her state some. Other state leaders have followed suit, including Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, also a Democrat.

It wasn't always considered acceptable to use that kind of optimistic rhetoric, however.

"Trump peddles unsubstantiated hope in dark times," read a March 20 "analysis" by CNN's Stephen Collinson. Saying Trump was "adopting the audacity of false hope" and embracing "premature optimism," Collinson charged that "there's no doubt he overhyped the immediate prospects for the drug" because the FDA had not provided an explicit timeline on approving the drug to treat coronavirus.

The media's also now admitting that Trump's earlier statement that the fatality rate from the Wuhan Flu would maybe be lower than 1%... also may be true.

After they accused him of "lying." About what was stated as being a hunch or guess.

Guesses and hunches which depart from CNN's and the NYT's guesses and hunches are now "lies" which require censorship, deplatforming, and possible prosecution.

Watching the media response to President Trump's handling of the pandemic has been an educational experience for anyone who has been paying attention. It seems no matter what actions the President takes or what comments and opinions he offers, somebody at the major cable networks and newspapers is standing by to jump all over him. Unfortunately, on several notable occasions, Trump has turned out to be right. And then comes the embarrassing moment when the media talking heads have to reluctantly deliver the same news.

One key example of this phenomenon popped up a few weeks ago when the President offered an opinion about the mortality rate for the novel coronavirus. At that time, Dr. Anthony Fauci was estimating it to be "around two percent." Some other medical authorities had put the figure as high as 2.6%. Trump declared that he thought it was going to be considerably lower, "way lower than one percent," specifying that this was just "a hunch" that he had.

That was all it took. The press was all over him. He was "misleading" the nation. He was "contradicting the medical community." Trump was "at odds with what health experts are saying." But yesterday, CNN found themselves describing the mortality rate for the virus in new terms. Oops.

The media's insistence that only the alleged "facts" they claim are true are permitted to be publicly uttered has now been extended to cover hunches, guesses, estimates, and speculations.

Anyone who Subversively departs from the media's approved (allowed) range of guesswork risks severe penalties.

The media are leading this country to the edge of a revolution, but it's not the revolution they have in mind.

The media has been eagerly attacking everyone else's right to free speech -- Wait until we have our turn.

You're not the only people capable of inflicting punishments for speech, Media.

posted by Ace at 03:49 PM

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